Information about a product includes descriptions of its various attributes. For example, attributes of a deodorant product may include its scent (or lack thereof), its active ingredients or inactive ingredients, its intended manner of use (e.g., spray on, roll on, etc.), among many other attributes.
These attributes are often stored in a database, along with attributes for many other products. Large databases can include descriptions of as many as 2.2 million products or more. In combination with other data, such as sales data, these databases can support various analytical techniques, such as identifying market trends, gauging the success of a product (or group of products) relative to others, etc.
However, entering product descriptions into such databases can be an error-prone process, causing the data in a product database to be inaccurate or inconsistent. Such inaccuracies or inconsistencies limit the effectiveness of analytic techniques applied to the data.